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SYSTEM OF A DOWN Singer Open To Issuing ‘Greatest Hits’ CD With Previously Unreleased Tracks

Musik Universe conducted an interview with singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, poet and political activist Serj Tankian (SYSTEM OF A DOWN) on August 11 at this year’s edition of the Heavy MTL festival at Parc Jean-Drapeau in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. You can now watch the chat below.

Tankian and his SYSTEM bandmates have made it clear in recent interviews that no plans have yet been made for the group to begin work on a new studio album. However, the singer says that he would be receptive to the idea of issuing a “best-of”-style collection with several previously unreleased songs from the SYSTEM archives.

“I think we have about four or five unreleased tracks that we finished before,” Serj said. “We need to talk about what to do with them, etc. But I would be very open to releasing, like, a greatest-hits record with a few [previously] unreleased tracks. However, we haven’t really discussed it, so I don’t wanna make a promise.”

Tankian is spending much of his time this year promoting his third solo album, “Harakiri”, which debuted at No. 29 on the Billboard album chart last month, selling 12,000 copies in its first week of release.

Asked if he misses writing music in a band-type situation while he is working on his solo material, Tankian said, “It’s an interesting dynamic, I think, writing by yourself and writing with people. When you have a very focused idea, a very concrete kind of understanding of what you wanna present and have the skills and the ability to completely present it the exact way that you want to, it’s much more conducive to do it yourself. If you have ideas that require other people’s input to kind of make it something else than what you have, then a collaboration — whether it’s with SYSTEM or anyone else for that matter — would be much smarter.”

SYSTEM OF A DOWN last released new music in 2005 on the “Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize” albums, going on hiatus the following year.

The band reunited in 2011 for touring purposes and launched a new run with DEFTONES on August 2 in Philadelphia.

Tankian told Loudwire that SYSTEM‘s recent tours have been a “blast,” adding, “I think we’ve played better because of it. There was new excitement in playing together and all of the shows have been really great. Everyone’s told us that we sound better than we did in 2006 when we left off, so I think it’s great.”